Huge thanks to overseas fan coordinator Heidi (huhuhuhu) for all of her hard work putting this event together, for always thinking of us overseas fans, and for this terrific account. Thumbs up, dear friend!^^ (Terri and I contributed funds toward the event, so all of you CloudUSAers were represented.)

We appreciate the info about the video as well, as we were definitely wondering why the heck it was shortened. And the world flags not making it onto Rain’s birthday cake. So, it was the venue authorities pulling all those shenanigans. A pox on them! How could you screw up a celeb’s birthday for his fans like that? Thank heavens Rain enjoyed it anyway, a lot.

No apologies, Heidi and Rainbar China. Y’all did your best and did a great job. 🙂 ^@@^

Thank you to all those who participated in The Squall Beijing Birthday Event. Birthday wishes from clouds all over the world were collected and collated into a video. The plan was to show this, as a surprise, to Rain at the Squall Beijing concert on 18 June, after his debut history video.

I asked for contribution to this event, as we are also preparing a huge birthday cake on the day. With the funds I have collected, I also arranged the following items for Rain and his staff.

All the items were brought to Beijing on 17 June. They were packed and I added a label on the bags. They were then passed to Rain’s staff. We heard that they had a birthday party at the night for dancer captain Song Tak, and we hoped they enjoyed the champagne and the snacks.

I also arranged a flower stand on behalf of world clouds. This was delivered on 18 June and displayed outside Rain’s room at the backstage.

And now about the surprise birthday event at the concert on 18 June.

The birthday video was originally agreed to be about 4 minutes long, then it had to be reduced to 2 minutes, then at the very last minute 1.5 minutes. This created a lot of hard work for the people editing the final version, and I apologize on their behalf if some were missing. [Stephe’s Note: You can watch both the video shown at the concert and the unedited version in this post HERE. How dare the venue coordinators screw with it? Poor Chinese Cloud sisters! Grrrr! ^@@^]

The length of the video was at least communicated to us. What came as a surprise was that the authorities decided to mute our voices and music as well. I didn’t realize this at that time. I thought we made a mistake in the rush of editing the final version, or perhaps there was a sound problem. As a result, Rain, and all of us there, literally only “watched” the video. To make up for it, we sang happy birthday as we watched.

I found out only afterwards the authorities decided our shouts of “Oppa!”, etc. was too noisy and not appropriate. This was the strangest reason beyond my imagination and comprehension. And whatever reason it was over now.

After showing the video a huge birthday cake was rolled out to the centre stage. Rain was both amused and touched. When he thanked us he was choked with emotion but he held it very well. And he was super, super cute when he started to cut the cake.

His knife landed on the figurine so he couldn’t cut the cake. He asked us if the cake was real. When the knife went down finally it knocked the letter “a” and it fell to the floor. Rain punched his chest to show his heartache about the falling letter. Then he picked it up, licked it and tried to stick it back to the cake!

He must have felt cutting the cake was more tiring than performing a song. So he decided to end it quickly by giving us a special treat: kung fu master Rain playing the knife.

Our design of the birthday cake was to put country flags at the bottom layer of the cake. But this was not approved by the authorities after a long wait for their decision. So at the end we just put World Clouds. [Stephe’s Note: Whaaaaaaa? Those *****es! I hope a Cloud or two gave them the finger! *speechless* ^@@^]

So I apologize that many plans were not being carried out to our satisfaction. But I hoped most, if not all of you who participated in the event could find yourself in the video. If you couldn’t, please accept my sincere apologies again. A copy of the full, original version was presented to Rain, so that he could take his time to recognize the faces of all the fans who said happy birthday to him in the video. My apologies too to those who didn’t have a chance to participate in the event. This is not a Cloud initiative, and we were not sure if the event will be approved, so we were not able to publicly announce the event.

Special thanks to Rainbar China who spent much effort and time preparing the birthday event. We were very grateful that overseas clouds could participate in this.

This is wonderful Stephe, glad all Clouds were represented. Not sure if RainRain sends out a general “thank you” to all Clouds, It my be a lot on RainRain, but I think he should send a shout out to each Cloud group. Also thank you Terrie and Stephe for representing us. You ladies do so much and deserve a big hug and thanks 👏🏾🤗 💐🌹😀

Unless he mentions a specific country, Rain does feel grateful to all of his Clouds all over the world and includes us in his thanks. I do agree with you, though — specific thanks would be nice and very special sometimes. 🙂

Hi Stephe thanks for sharing the Birthday Surprise for Rain. But I can not help but feel he is being cheated. The powers that be, that govern such things are acting like kdramas wicked mother/mother in laws. The international fans must depend on the cooperation of the surrogates of the China and Korean fan clubs. I am beginning to wonder if he is getting a true picture of how many fans and how much he is loved internationally. there was a few posts on the official Cloud world site concerning gifts and messages sent but not received. I am sorry for the rant but I hate to see so much effort wasted and he is not receiving it.

Hi, Libbie. I must admit the shenanigans that went on with the venue authorities behind the scenes in Beijing pissed me off, but I do believe it was more of a cultural thing… we’re talking about China, after all…

However, I feel that Rain is getting his gifts. Hundreds of fans send him gifts and cards and letters, and R.A.I.N. Co isn’t a big corporation but a small management company for Rain only, intimate and personal. God only knows how many employees they’d have to hire and how many hours of the day it would take to confirm receipt with fans for every gift he gets. Makes my head hurt just thinking about it, Lol~ I think that might be why R.A.I.N. Co has begun blogging this year about gifts from the long-standing and larger fan groups out there — to assure people that they take all gifts to Rain seriously whether they say so or not.

Terri and I have always gotten some kind of confirmation after sending a gift(s) for the Cloud USA membership, so far.

As far as I know, Rain’s management is very careful when it comes to holding his gifts for him until he can get to the office to see them. But it’s near impossible to send out thousands of individual confirmations like that… I’m pretty sure the big companies (JYPE, YG, SM, etc.) don’t even do that. Rain even tweeted himself once that hundreds of times a day he wished he could shout-out mentions, but it would be all he’d be doing all day long in that case instead of working, and that he appreciates everyone for thinking of him and sending him support…

No apologies necessary. This is a safe place for rants and to get things off your chest because they’re much better that way.^^

I really don’t think you have anything to worry about, though. After 14 years in showbiz and at 34 years old, Rain is a smart cookie, smarter than people realize. And he does know where a lot of his fans are. He even used to use Twitter apps out of curiosity, that cracked me up. Cute Lol~ Here’s one (https://cloudusa.wordpress.com/2011/08/16/tweets-abound-do-you-know-where-your-followers-are/). My favorite one, though, was when he tweeted that Asian fans liked his short hair and USA fans liked his long hair, and he chuckled. 🙂

Like I said, you’re very welcome and apologies not necessary. Fans need a place to not only express joy, but to constructively vent their feelings as well without being attacked.

When I first started following his career 7 years ago, I wondered that same thing. I think for a while, he probably had no clue of his mass appeal. Although now, like Stephe said, he’s so much more involved in all aspects of social media. I think he is much more aware now of just how widespread his fan base really is.

Now if we can only get him to leave Asia for a little bit…..that would be Gravy! SMILES…………………..

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